Darker Than Blood
by Nephiliam
Summary: Will's psyche shall fall into complete chaos, breaking into a million shattered pieces. Hannibal will offer a guiding and tender hand to pull him out of his pain and onto the path of darkness. Rated M for later chapters. Dark!Hannigram.
1. Waking Nightmares

Before you read: William has not been incarcerated in this piece of work and he has no idea what Hannibal is or what he's planning. As far as Will is concerned, Hannibal is his simply psychologist and his friend.

Note: Little details from Thomas Harris's beautiful books are mentioned here and there (for example, Hannibal's first kill), but it is in no way a requirement to read the story before you. If you have any questions or comments on the validity of these parallels, feel free to private message me.

* * *

_It's hard to be your own person_

_when you can't get out of your own head."_

_-Gideon_

* * *

Waking Nightmares

The time was 3:42 in the morning. Will sat on the side of his bed, sweat pooling down the side of his face. He had been dreaming again, something that he assumed would be the death of him. It had been about the stag again, with the raven hair and knowing eyes. It was able see him, see past him, see through him; it knew everything about him; what he felt, what he'd done.

In this particular dream, the stag had charged him, its horns piercing his body through. He had felt its bone antlers pierce through both of his lungs, his blood pooling up and out of his mouth. As his vision had begun to blur, the muscles in his neck giving out and his head lolling to the side, he had seen Hannibal Lecter with his arm wrapped protectively around the shoulder of Abigail Hobbs; both with small, happy smiles on their faces.

Abigail's voice rang clear, as if she were talking in his ear.

"Dad."

As he awoke from the nightmare, her voice continued to echo in his head.

Had Hobbs been nearby? Or had she been talking to him?

Or, he thought uncomfortably to himself, had he been Hobbs in the dream?

He shook his head, attempting to clear his thoughts. He wouldn't think of such things. Not tonight.

~x~

Hannibal kept the driver's side window down as he sped past the peeling sign of the Patapsco Valley State Park while on his way back to Baltimore, Maryland. He could still feel the blood of his latest kill running down his face, even though he had long since rinsed it off in the river that had witnessed the bloodshed.

It was a shame, he thought, to waste such delectable seasoning – but it had to be done; he couldn't very well stain the seats of his car.

He thought back to the cause of this particular trip.

William Graham.

The man was something of a toy to Hannibal, yet somehow more than that. Hannibal didn't have a word for what Will was. More than a toy or a doll but nothing like a child – Abigail had taken that title after Will had, unfortunately, attached himself to her.

Hannibal had needed to take his mind off of that man; thus a nice hunting trip.

Tonight's kill had, unluckily, been awarded the brunt of Hannibal's frustration. It hadn't been a grocery stop to refill his refrigerator, nor had it been another attack by the Chesapeake Ripper for no one was going to find a mutilated corpse.

No, it had been purely a night for him to clear his mind; something he hadn't had the opportunity to do in a couple of years.

A "just for fun" kill.

He could feel the business card of one Lauren S. Winder in his pocket, the corner sticking into his thigh. Ms. Winder had been an acquaintance he had made back in the nineties while on his way to an APA conference in Nevada. She had been a particularly rude woman who had t-boned his car before reluctantly giving him her business card, though he had not done the same in return.

A call to the police was never made and the accident case had ever been produced. No, he had filed her away for a special night – a special night like this. It was only recently that he had discovered she had moved a few towns over from his residents.

She had been the perfect target.

Within two weeks time the fifty five year old woman would be declared missing but, with no body to prove her death and with no family or spouse to fund a search party, she would soon fall off of the radar as a cold case.

A new member among the vast isles of the forgotten.

Forgotten because Hannibal Lecter willed it so.

~x~

Will stood behind the chair he would normally sit in during his therapy appointment – if what they were doing could be called therapy. Hannibal sat in his usual position across from his patient, his eyes on Will's – though Will refused to look directly at the other man, instead memorizing the hard line of his jaw.

"You say Abigail and I were in the dream as well?"

"Yes."

"And why tell me of that part of the dream?"

Will's eyes glanced to Hannibal's then back to his jaw. "Because it was part of the dream."

"Yet you seem the most disturbed by it."

Will hesitated, his eyes moving about. "It was Abigail. She…" he trailed off, mind repeating the scenario in his head over and over; as if he had missed some important detail; as if he could go back and change that little moment, "…she said the word 'dad'."

"And why is that troubling to you?"

"Because I don't know if she was talking to me or if she was talking to Hobbs. Because–" he cut off, his fingers white from grasping the back of the chair so harshly. Hannibal could smell the fear on him – the unwillingness yet the necessity to talk about it.

"Because I might…I might have _been _Hobbs."

Hannibal sat for a moment, waiting to see if Will would speak again. When he did not, Hannibal rose from his chair and clasped his hands behind his back. They had had this conversation before and Hannibal had attempted a number of different methods to approach it with.

He had early on discovered it would do him no good to make Will believe he was anything like Hobbs; all that would do was put him in a closed state of mind that was impossible to work with and to manipulate. Hannibal's goals for Will had been started with the death of Garret Jacob Hobbs, yet they were wildly interrupted with him as well. Hannibal would have much preferred to be in control of the setting for Will's first kill; something that wouldn't have forced his hand the moment he saw his victim; something that would have let him _play._

It was nothing like Hannibal's first kill.

The butcher by pond. Hannibal had savored in that kill, with the small, taunting slices, even though it had ended in mere minutes.

Nevertheless, times had changed since he had first felt the thrill of cutting into a man's fat flesh; it just wasn't a simple task anymore.

Yet it was still an enjoyable one.

"You are nothing like Garrett Jacob Hobbs, Will. You are not a killer."

"You don't know what I do in my free time," Will joked desperately, trying to diverge the topic away from his dream, from his life. Will always tried to joke his way out of the situation at the beginning of their conversations, with dark little stabs of humor that was not lost on Hannibal.

"You are not a killer, Will. The sooner you believe that, the sooner your dreams will dissipate."

Will's eyes met Hannibal's for another brief second before turning is head to stare at the beautiful wooden desk that took up a surprisingly small portion of the room. "How could I possibly change the way I see myself when I see the truth that I believe?"

"Why don't you start by believing me?"

"I…I do believe–"

"You are pretending to believe me, Will, to delude yourself of what you really are."

When Will didn't respond, Hannibal moved to stand in front of Will's chair. "Often times it is easier to believe a lie than it is to believe the truth, especially when it is about yourself. In your particular case, your mind has put up a defense against this lie by attempting to scare you with it in forms such as your dreams and the stag that you keep seeing."

Will was once again staring at Hannibal's jaw.

"What if it isn't a lie, Doctor Lecter? What if the truth is staring me dead in the eye?" Another glance to and away from Hannibal's eyes. "What if I enjoy killing? What if my mind is trying to tell – trying to _scream_ – the truth?

"Because I'll tell you, Doctor, that pulling the trigger seemed to change something in me," Will's breathing had picked up in the slightest, his heart rate accelerated. "Something snapped. It's like, deep down, I'm not truly afraid of killing another human being." Hannibal could smell the confusion and the _sickness _rolling off of him in waves.

When Will spoke like this, he wasn't afraid to meet Hannibal's eyes.

That was something that had caught Hannibal's attention about Will after knowing him for a short time. When he began to talk about killing people – killing Hobbs – he wasn't afraid to meet Hannibal's stare and hold it. In fact, Will seemed to relish in the eye contact, as if he was bonding through just that simple act.

"It was almost like I had fully come into myself. Fully accepted the truth."

"It is only up to you to accept the truth, Will."

Will's heart rate slowly began to descend and Will's eyes had shifted to looking back at Hannibal's jaw. "How am I supposed to do that, Doctor?"

"By, as I said before, believing me."

Will showed the slightest smile. The darkest part of the conversation was over and Will could begin to relax; his muscles began to loosen and his fingers released their death grip from back of the chair.

Will always showed Hannibal both sides of himself during these conversations – and Hannibal had taken a preference to one of them.

There was the charming personality that ran on his surface; the one that he deluded to the outside world and to his own person – the one that liked dark stabs of humor and had difficulty with eye contact. The one that believed the action of killing a fellow human being was one of the ugliest things in the world.

But moreover, he preferred the personality that festered below; the one that he showed to Doctor Lecter and Doctor Lecter alone.

The one that caused Will to feel such a protective need to shield Abigail Hobbs from any damage that the world could cause her – or that she could cause the world – because she was so close to what that personality was – what it wanted to be.

The personality that knew deep down what he was meant to be doing; not looking at the beauty of other artists, but creating his own pieces of artwork – pieces that, Hannibal was certain, would have such an individual uniqueness to them that copycats would hesitate to duplicate.

The first portion of Hannibal Lecter's design would soon come to a close: the complete destruction and annihilation of the sanity of William Graham. A couple more pushes in the right direction and Will would fall into a state of utter chaos.

This was when Hannibal would be there for him with a willing hand to pull him up and out of the confusion and the pain that he was feeling. He would use a guiding and tender hand to lead Will down the same path that Hannibal had chosen for himself.

He was more than confident that Will would see the conclusions that was already beginning to dawn on him before the collapse of his sanity. It was as if his psyche was preparing for the fall.

"That's quite a line, Doctor Lecter; do you use it on all of your patients?"

Hannibal smiled in return. "Only on the one's that I like."

* * *

_Please review with questions/comments/concerns about the character(s). Constructive criticism is overly appreciated, seeing as this is going to be a considerably longer fic and I want my readers to be happy with it. This is a "Pilot," if you will. If you like it, fav/follow/comment, and I will be happy to continue._

_Hannigram is later to come._

_If it is not already implied, this is going to be a dark fic. I suggest this be the only chapter you read if you're not mentally prepared for heartbreak._


	2. Hero

Note: Welcome to the second chapter. I apologize it took so long; it's harvesting season for my garden (which takes up half of my backyard) and there's a lot to do. But the second chapter is here, and I will try my hardest to have these chapters done quicker. If you have any comments or questions, feel free to leave them in the comment section or send me a quick private message into my inbox. Thank you for reading and enjoy the chapter.

Acknowledgment: This is my acknowledgment to countlecterviii and qwertermerster (just add . to the end of their names to get to their tumblr pages) for giving me a couple lovely facts that I needed to complete this chapter.

* * *

"_I believe Will knows exactly_

_what's going on in his head."_

_-Jack Crawford_

* * *

Hero

Will sat at the desk in his office, browsing through his notes for the next class. Their discussion was a simple recap of the Chesapeake Ripper for the students who had missed his previous lecture. Under normal circumstances, Will would have refused to repeat a class on something that could be just as easily researched through other means. Unfortunately for him, there had been an influx of interest in that particular topic and he had been forced to create a second class for his students minoring in criminology.

It had only been recently that he had begun to despise his teaching career; the brainless questions, the monotonous atmosphere. He was confident in the fact that half of the class only took the class because they needed credits to fill.

It was inconsequential now – the class had been created and his lecture notes prepared. Will ran his hand through his hair and leaned back in his chair, detaching himself from his work. He was inclined to rest his eyes for a moment but fear stopped him; fear of the unconsciousness that might follow.

Beside that, thoughts of his dreams lead to thoughts of Doctor Lecter and the hard outline of his jaw – though Will was uncertain why that was the part of his psychiatrist that he often thought about. Though, there was something calming about Doctor Lecter, something that eased the feral side of him. However, Will supposed that was the point of being a psychiatrist; calming the patients into a state of trust and understanding.

But still something taunted him about his doctor, something untamed and dark.

Beside his papers, his cell phone began to frantically vibrate. Opening his eyes, Will stared down at the caller ID: Jack Crawford.

With a small effort, Will flipped his phone open and put the receiver to his ear. "Can I help you, Jack?"

"Will," the burly voice replied sardonically. Will silently chastised himself; Jack wasn't mocking him, he had simply said his name. "We need you to come down to –"

"I have a class, Jack."

"I'll come down there and get you myself if I have to," and the connection clicked off.

Jack had hung up on him.

Sometimes, on exceptional occasions such as this, Will liked to imagine himself taking a nine millimeter and shoving it in Jack Crawford's mouth. Perhaps it would change his awareness of what was considered poor phone etiquette.

As Will gathered the papers around him sharp footsteps sounded from the doorway. Will glanced up at the well dressed man.

"Hannibal Lecter. I didn't expect to see you here."

Hannibal stood in the doorway, head turning to observe the room before resting his eyes on the disheveled man opposite him. "Jack Crawford spoke to me on the phone about two hours ago."

Will almost let out a laugh. Almost.

"Jack sent me a babysitter?"

"So it would seem."

Will's eyes darted around the other man, taking in the site of him.

Doctor Lecter wore a fitted, dark navy, two piece suit and stood with his usual prim posture, hands clasped behind his back. Will had noticed a habit of Doctor Lecter's; whenever the man entered a room, his eyes quietly wandered every corner before there was a noticeable change in his atmosphere – a sort of calmness seemed to settle within himself – though Will doubted if anyone else could see the change – for its subtly was polished.

Will looked away from the man, back to his shuffled notes. Hannibal walked fully into the room, stepping up to his desk. He scanned the sheets of paper.

"The Chesapeake Ripper," Hannibal noted aloud. "You have a class on him?"

"I've been forced to create another class about him, seeing as so many college students have a taste for murder."

"I wouldn't call it a 'taste', per say."

"Oh?" Will looked up and met Hannibal's eye for a moment, before settling his eyes on the man's jaw. "And what would you call it?"

"I would call it the curiosity of human nature. It is like a carnival to them, like watching a lobster clawed boy or a man who can make his eyes bulge. It is a person completely different from their own, only instead of having the trait show itself in their appearance – such as the bearded lady – it instead reveals itself in their actions – through murder and mutilation."

"Interesting theory," Will murmured, setting the shuffled notes into his bag.

"To me," Hannibal said. "It is not a theory but an observation."

Will looked up for another glance at his psychiatrist's eyes. "Perhaps you haven't observed the right people."

Hannibal hesitated a moment, almost feeling a challenge in Will's words. However, he held his tongue. "Perhaps."

After a long moment Will spoke again, "You do realize I don't need a babysitter, right?"

"Yes, of course," Hannibal agreed, his eyes coming to rest on Will's face. "But since I've been enticed to travel to get you, I might as well attend anyways. I find the interworkings of the FBI quite interesting."

Will looked up at the man and released a small, jaded laugh. "I don't."

~x~

Jack Crawford stood at the very edge of the crime scene, waiting. He had sent Hannibal Lecter to retrieve William Graham from his university and bring him to Walkersville. They were currently twenty minutes late.

So he stood, glancing at his watch every other second.

As the little red hand clicked – _45, 46, 47 _– away.

Jack was always slightly nervous whenever he called Will to a crime scene without some sort of escort – he had an anxious feeling about Will's true nature.

_57_

_58_

_59_

A car drove up to the caution tape that cut off Hahn circle to the public, two men in the front seats. There had been an unnecessary amount of public attention to the spot and thus had to push them back to the main road.

The doors opened to reveal an always polished Hannibal Lecter and a disheveled mess of a man. William Graham.

"You're twenty one minutes late," Jack informed them as they walked closer, putting up his hardest eyes. "To the second."

"We strive for perfection," Will said, following the taller man, eyes scanning the scene behind them. The crime had taken place behind the third house on the right and therefore was out of any eyes that stood on the wrong side of the tape.

The house itself was a plane, one story home, built with orange bricks. A flag pole stood high in the air over the lawn with no flag at its top. Someone must have taken it down after they had found the body.

"I apologize, Jack. Highway 15 had an unexpected amount of traffic for this time of day," Hannibal said with a slight nod of his head.

"Yes well…" he gave a last hard glare at Will, who looked as impatient as ever, and turned to walk in the direction of the murder. The two men followed, "…now that you're here you may as well be useful.

"Our latest case, Ewan Jenkins, a man in his late sixties was found strung up in his backyard tree. A neighbor found the body approximately two days later." As they approached the house, Crawford eyed Will, searching his face for any recognition of the residence; however, Will's face remained quiet.

They walked past officers who stood stiff at their appearance, a pale, nervous look to them. Bev stood with a clipboard in front of the tree, glancing up every now and then, loudly remarking to Price about this and that. Jack liked having Bev around at a crime scene; the tension seemed to soften a little with her around.

"-a feat, though," Bev said, making another mark on her chart. "There aren't any ladder marks or–"

"Are you two actually working, or are you just goofing off?"

"Does it look like we're working?" Price asked, blue gloves and white mask against his face. "Because I sincerely apologize if it does."

Will paid no heed to the people around him as he looked up at the aged man; naked, a hook through his mouth and out the back of his head, stomach ripped open and organs wrapped around his arms and legs.

"Are there any missing?" Will asked.

"Any what missing?"

"Organs."

"Organs? Not that we can see from here – but there's no way to be sure until we cut him down," Bev shrugged, coming to stand by Will. She pointed up at the body. "But you see the way the killer tied his organs to his limbs? He literally cut the small intestine into four separate pieces and tied them around his wrists and ankles like bracelets."

"Is there any obvious reason for the crimes?" Hannibal asked, eyes watching Will.

Will stood silently, watching the corpse with intense eyes, his posture rigid.

"Not that we can tell. Jenkins was a decorated army surgeon who saved countless lives on the battlefield," Jack said, arms folded. "The man was a hero."

"Hero," Will murmured.

After a moment of silence Will turned and nodded to Jack.

"Clear the crime scene!" Jack began to yell, turning and striding away. As everyone began to follow him, Will closed his eyes.

Hannibal watched for a brief moment before following the crowd to the front of the one story building.

~x~

Will who was not Will opened his eyes, looking up at the large tree. The first feeling he had was that of urgency. He had swung a rope over the second lowest branch, hook at the end that touched the perfectly cut green grass.

There was a man with closed eyes at the bottom of the tree; hands tied behind his back, feet and knees bound together. He could recall breaking in that night, stalking into the man's bedroom, watching him sleep. Sleep was a peaceful thing, he thought, it was impolite to disrupt such a process.

But then again, he didn't have time to fight the army veteran.

He had injected the man with a heavy sedative then pulled him out of the back door. That was how they had ended up in the man's backyard.

"I climb on top of the sleeping man," Will who was not Will spoke, as he took four strides forward an kneeled on top of the man's stomach. "I reach for the hook that sits just a few feet away…"

He reached for the hook and placed the tip just on the crease of the old man's lips. The metal was frigid in his hand.

"I don't want to kill him while he is unconscious," he spoke, "But the man will overpower me if he is awake." Using the majority of his strength, he pushed the spike to the back of the man's throat out and out of his head.

The man's eyes suddenly opened, pain and fear just flashes through his confusion.

A sense of satisfaction bubbled in Will who was not Will as he used a knife that he had kept by the hook to gut open his victim and pull on his small intestine. A beautiful thing, the small intestine, long and narrow.

A suddenly shudder when down his spine and his shoulder burned.

"Will," a voice called, loud and obtrusive.

Will who was not Will fell away from the body, crawling backwards in fear, until his back hit the tree. His victim became perfectly still, his face frozen in his moment of fear.

"Will."

He was standing in the same spot he had started, staring up at the tree. Jack Crawford stood behind him, his hand on the same shoulder that had burned like fire just a few moments before. Why had Jack interrupted him? He knew not to interrupt him.

"_What?" _Will hissed in frustration, pulling away from Jack. He could still feel the cold metal of the hook in his hand.

"We've been waiting for thirty minutes. You haven't moved or said anything."

"It's my process, Jack, which you so blatantly interrupted."

The metal had been like holding power in the palm of his hand.

"Well what did you figure out in that time?"

Cold, cold power.

Will sighed and shook his arms a little, trying to get the feeling of ice out of them. He looked back up at the man in the tree. "Our killer is of smaller build then our victim, that's why he left him unconscious while he killed him. He was trying to shame the man, by leaving him naked with parts of his organs tied to him. It was almost as if the killer was trying to prove to himself that he was stronger than the victim, even if the victim wasn't awake."

"Why would he do that?"

"Because," Will looked away from the body, watching his surroundings. Hannibal stood a few paces away, listening to the conversation. "Because the man was a hero."

* * *

_Thank you for reading the second chapter. If you'd be so kind as to review with constructive criticism, I'd very much appreciate you and your face. The third chapter will come out faster than this chapter did, I pinky promise. _


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